McClatchy: U.S. agrees to delay on new Iranian sanctions

U.S. agrees to delay on new Iranian sanctions
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007


WASHINGTON — Opposition led by Russia forced the Bush administration Friday to slow its drive for tighter United Nations sanctions against Iran and give the Islamic republic until late November to disclose its entire nuclear program to U.N. inspectors.

In another measure of Russia's increased influence over U.S. foreign policy, McClatchy Newspapers has learned that President Bush is sending his secretaries of state and defense on a rare joint mission to Moscow to try to persuade the Kremlin to drop its opposition to the deployment of U.S. missile defenses in Europe, two State Department officials said.

State Department officials, who requested anonymity because the visit hasn't been publicly announced, said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates also hope to save a key arms control treaty that limits deployments of conventional military forces in Europe. Russia is vowing to withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty partly because of what experts say is the Kremlin's anger over Bush's missile defense plans.

The talks between Rice and Gates and their Russian counterparts are set for Oct. 12, the officials said. The rare joint mission by Bush's top national security aides underscores the growing clout that Russia now wields as it reaps windfall profits from rising oil prices and U.S. power ebbs because of the war in Iraq, America's frayed alliances and domestic financial turmoil.

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